Strategic Planning & Development for Privately Held Distributors

A strategic plan built to land in the field and evolve with time.

R.E.A.L. Evolution is the engagement I lead privately held distributors through to build strategy your leadership team can stand behind, your territory managers can execute, and your next generation can carry forward.

The plan gets built over several months of working together. We move in 1:1 interviews, virtual sessions, and two anchor in-person days spaced across the engagement, giving the strategy time to settle, the field-level reality time to surface, and your leadership team room to do the real work of deciding what matters and what doesn't.

  • 15 years in business
  • Former GE & Newell Rubbermaid
  • HBS Disruptive Strategy
  • NAW Large Company CEO Roundtable speaker
Headshot of Adriana McLane
Is this the right answer for you?

This work is built for a specific moment.

R.E.A.L. Evolution fits when the strategy you've been running needs to be rebuilt with intention, owned by the leadership team, and carried into the field. The triggers may vary, but the need is the same.

It's the right engagement if:

  • Your leadership team is ready to do real strategic work and not check a box
  • You want a strategist embedded with you for the duration, not a facilitator who delivers a deck and disappears
  • You're prepared to make decisions about priorities, sequencing, and what you'll stop doing to make room for what matters
  • You want a plan that survives contact with the field
  • Continuity matters: growth, leadership transition, family handoff, next-generation readiness

It's probably not the best fit if:

  • You're looking for a quick offsite that produces a deck
  • You want validation for decisions already made
  • Your leadership team isn't ready for the strategic discipline of an outside voice in the room
What it's like to go through R.E.A.L. Evolution

The shape of the journey.

R.E.A.L. Evolution unfolds across five phases. The first four get you to a real plan, and the fifth keeps it on point over time.

  1. Reveal

    What happens: I start with 1:1 interviews across your leadership team and selected voices from the field, customer service, and operations. I run targeted surveys with employees, customers, and vendors to bring outside perspective onto the table alongside what your team is seeing from the inside. We look at the data you have and the data you've been meaning to look at.

    What you walk away with: A clear picture of what's working, what's broken, and the assumptions inside your team that have quietly been running the strategy. You also get an Executive Strategic Opportunity Report, an assessment of your partnership portfolio and technology readiness, and a customized roadmap that frames the rest of the engagement.

  2. Envision

    What happens: A series of virtual working sessions with your leadership team building into the first in-person anchor day. We work through the next three to five years of the business using the Envision Compass™, which guides the conversation across four strategic directions: Purpose & Impact, Market Focus, Competitive Advantage, and Execution Foundation. What surfaced in Reveal stays in front of us throughout, so vision and field-level reality get built together.

    What you walk away with: Priorities your leadership team can name out loud and defend, a vision the field can recognize themselves in, and the major initiatives that will carry the strategy forward.

  3. Align

    What happens: Virtual working sessions translate priorities into who owns what, by when, with what resources. We work through sequencing, capacity, partnership and technology investment priorities, and what has to come off the plate to make room for what matters. The second in-person anchor day lands inside this phase, when the leadership team needs to be in the same room to make the hardest decisions: saying no, locking ownership, and committing to the sequence.

    What you walk away with: A structured execution plan with milestones, KPIs, and resource allocation, paired with real ownership and accountability across the leadership team. This is the hardest phase, because alignment requires saying no.

  4. Launch

    What happens: Virtual working sessions move the plan from the leadership team into the operating rhythm of the business. We design how strategy shows up in your branch managers' weeks, your territory managers' field execution, and your customer service team's priorities, with performance dashboards, accountability frameworks, and a communication plan to bring the rest of the organization along. The final plan is delivered at the close of this phase.

    What you walk away with: A plan running in the business, visible in how the team operates day to day.

The ongoing layer

05 — Evolution

What happens: Quarterly leadership worksessions to course-correct, with monthly touchpoints in between. We track what's holding, what's drifting, what's changed in the market, and what the plan needs to do next. Executive accountability reports keep leadership ownership visible across the year.

What you walk away with: Strategic discipline that compounds year over year. The plan stays alive because someone is keeping it alive with you.

Reimagining the plan in a changing market

We needed outside facilitation given the rapidly changing business climate. Adriana built a more robust strategic plan in a faster timeframe and expanded our thinking beyond the industry lens. She became part of our team and made it fun.

Tyler Booth

President, Piedmont Plastics

The shape of the work

How we'll work together.

R.E.A.L. Evolution runs roughly three to four months from kickoff through final plan delivery, then continues into Evolution.

The structure:

  • 1:1 interviews with your leadership team and selected voices from the field
  • Targeted surveys with employees, customers, and vendors
  • Virtual working sessions leading into the first anchor day
  • One full in-person day with your leadership team (Envision)
  • Virtual sessions to do the alignment work
  • One full in-person day for the hardest alignment decisions (Align)
  • Virtual sessions to operationalize the plan (Launch)
  • Final plan delivery
  • Evolution begins: quarterly worksessions and monthly touchpoints

Why this shape:

Strategy needs time to settle, and field-level reality keeps surfacing between sessions. Spreading the in-person work across months gives the leadership team room to test the thinking, push back on it, and bring real questions back to the table. Two anchor days separated by months produce a sharper plan than two days stacked back to back.

Sharp synthesis and strategic clarity

Adriana quickly synthesized our business information and identified the critical issues and growth drivers. She has an absolutely wonderful disposition and a sharp strategic mind.

Ty Johnson

CEO, Cascade Services

Embedded in the business, working at every level

Adriana brings a balance of creativity and organization to strategic planning. She has become integral to our company and is a great advocate for addressing the needs of all levels.

Jeff Daniel

President, Blevins, Inc.

Ready to talk?

A Strategy Discussion is a 30-minute conversation about where your business is, what's coming, and whether R.E.A.L. Evolution is the right fit for what you're facing. A real conversation to see if we should keep talking.

Schedule a Strategy Discussion

Work well,
Adriana

Looking for ongoing strategic partnership only?

If you already have a strategic plan you believe in, go straight to Evolution.

R.E.A.L. Evolution builds the plan and transitions into ongoing partnership. If you have a plan you believe in and just need someone embedded to make it hold, Evolution is the direct path.